The revelations come in response to questions
by Andrej Hunko, a member of German
Parliament, after a Berlin-based hacker
collective called "Chaos Computer Club" exposed in
October that the German police
were using potentially illegal software
called "Bundestrojaner” (i.e. federal Trojan
horse) to spy on suspects.

The Bundestrojaner spyware can be disguised as a
legitimate software update and can monitor Internet use, log
messenger chats and keystrokes, record Skype calls and activate microphones or
webcams to record audio or snapshots to send back to
authorities.

In a letter from Secretary of State Ole
Schröder on March 6, which I have translated, Hunko was
informed that German federal police force, the Bundeskriminalamt
(BKA), met to discuss the use of monitoring software with
counterparts from the U.S., Britain, Israel, Luxembourg,
Liechtenstein, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and
Austria. The meetings took place separately between Feb.
19, 2008, and Feb. 1, 2012.

The letter goes on to say that the FBI, France's secret service
(i.e. DCRI)
and UK's Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA) met
with German law enforcement to discuss the basic legal
requirements and the technical aspects of
using the highly intrusive surveillance technology, according
to Slate.

In 2011 German authorities acquired a license to test a similar
Trojan technology called “FinSpy” that was reportedly
used for five months by Hosni Mubarak’s
Egyptian state security forces in 2010 to monitor Skype
accounts and record conversations over the Internet.